November 1st, 2009
One of the best things about this chilly autumn season is going to see the Halloween Midnight Organ Concert at Brown University. I look forward to it every year. About 20 minutes before midnight, the dark Sayles Hall got crowded with students starting to sit/ lie down with pillows and blankets for the late night musical treat. Many were dressed in costume- I saw a Rubic’s cube and several Where’s Waldos. At the strike of midnight, zombie looking creatures came in though the main doors carrying a coffin- out from which rose Dracula (Mark Steinbach), who laughed menacingly before climbing the stairs to play the organ. What followed was a spooky Halloween- classical concert. In the middle of the event, some of the zombie “tomb kickers” rocked it out, singing the Monster Mash song. This is surely the best part of Halloween!
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October 8th, 2009
Today I’m sharing the October Manners poster from the Tokyo Metro Series. Though I cannot see it in person, the website keeps me up to date. This time we see someone eating cup noodles and splashing all over people in the train. This is a good reminder for studio-ettiquette too. Please be conscious of food when around lots of paper products and prints!
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October 7th, 2009
This last weekend I got to participate in a design/innovation conference put together by RISD and Brown students, called A Better World by Design. This conference’s goals included bringing together a global community of innovators to the city of Providence, and to reach across different design fields, different cultures, and different ideas to unite under a common goal of making the world a better place. Spreakers shared inspiring stories, workshops gave helpful informations, and panel sessions opened up discussions.
The conference lasted 3 days, from last Friday to Sunday, and took place between the two school campuses. Speakers included Jan Chipcase, Teddy Cruz, William Drenttel, Vivian Loftness, and John Maeda, among many others. Though I still had classes to attend and homework to get done, I did my best to go to as many events as I could. I enjoyed the panel discussions best, where 4-5 speakers would open a dialogue on a particular subjects. Panel sessions I attended were about Information Design, Graphic Design and Business, and about Design and Activism. Though most of our school lives, we focus on our individual work in our majors, it was inspiring to see and listen to people from all sorts of disciplines. I learned a lot from these sessions, and became inspired to try to help the world with my own skills too. It is really important in this age to address and actively engage in design, technology, and enterprise to reshape our communities and work for our environment.
The following images are from the photo flickr pool for this conference.
In the auditorium at the first speaker session- I’m near the stairs with the beige and black shirt.
Design and Activism panel
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October 1st, 2009
Last Saturday, the RISD Museum had their monthly Free For All Saturday event. On the last Saturday of every month, the museum lets you go in for free, and also hosts events for the general community. In response to a new exhibit opening called “Inner Cities,” an installation by Arnie Zimmerman, of ceramic figures building up architectural elements of a city, there was an outdoor event called “And we built a city together.” Children and families were decorating cardboard houses with fun screenprinted stickers of Providence Architecture. Each of the cardboard houses had long strips of paper attached to it where you could write your thoughts on the city. Then the houses were places upon cardboard hills to build up our city of Providence together.
I went with some friends to see the exhibition and we quickly got caught up in making some cardboard houses ourselves. It was fun just to take a break and color, cut, draw with other children. Here’s by own house on Karin St. below!
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September 27th, 2009
One of the first projects of my senior studio class was to address the questions “who are you?” and “how do you see yourself in the design world?” The project was really open ended- you could go in any abstract direction you wanted. In class we made quick prototype sketches and I came in with a pinwheel-like thing made of cut up papers. I thought the cutting up papers and weaving them together again was reflective of how I view the design process; In any work we have a little bit of ourselves in it. We take our knowledge, background, and experiences and cut them up- from there we take relevant and necessary parts and combine them with other visual information and sources to try to communicate a message. Different pieces get woven together. Sometimes this new woven piece does not entirely work so you have to cut that up and put it together with something else again. Design can be describes as a process of cutting and gluing ideas together. As a designer, we have control of what pieces we are using and what image we are weaving all this into.
I decided to show this idea by making a stop motion animation. I set up cameras and lights in my room and took many pictures while I worked with various paper cut outs. In the end I had over 1300 photos taken! Now I need to work on finishing it and editing the sequences.
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September 16th, 2009
After coming back to Providence, I’ve been busy at the Resident Assistant training at school. For two weeks several student leaders learned about dealing with tough situations, organizing and implementing community programs, and about activities happening this upcoming year. We made door decorations for students living on our floors and also made bulletin board art.
One of the best parts of training was going to Camp and do fun bonding exercises as a team. We did low and high ropes courses. I was really scared of the high ropes, because I do not have much upper arm strength, but in the end I mustered enough courage to try the easiest course. It was encouraging to have people cheering me on from below. At the end of the course though, I was happy to have my feet on the ground again.
Posted in Education, Nature, Providence | No Comments »
